Rescuecom Declares Victory… In Dropping Its Lawsuit Against Google

Legal Issues

from the some-victory dept

We’ve covered some of Rescuecom’s bizarre lawsuit against Google for selling Adwords based on Rescuecom’s trademarks. The lawsuit has been going on for a while, without Rescuecom getting very far. At almost every turn it was pointed out that what was happening was not trademark infringement. Finally, after many years, Rescuecom has given up and dropped the case… but in the process it’s declaring “victory” in the lawsuit. Seriously. The explanation for the “victory”? That Google now lets trademark holders remove trademarks from the “keyword suggestion” tool. Only problem? Google enabled this in 2005.

Basically, the more likely story is that Rescuecom knew it was going to lose and just gave up and declared victory.

Oh, and also, just a few months ago, we noted that Rescuecom was on the other side of nearly an identical lawsuit, in which it was buying ads on Best Buy trademarks (hypocrisy much?). Being involved in two lawsuits at the same time where you’re making totally contradicting arguments isn’t likely to end well. So it seems likely that given the two lawsuits, and the likelihood of losing the Google one, Rescuecom threw in the towel on that one and then pretended it “won” for the sake of a press release. Based on that logic, can we declare “victory” in our decision not to sue Rescuecom for insulting our intelligence?

Filed Under: ads, adwords, liability, trademark
Companies: google, rescuecom